A growing number of positives suffer from a long version of covid with symptoms or sequelae that last weeks or months.
Among the mysteries that surround this coronavirus is that of the long version of the covid An increasing number of those who are positive have symptoms or sequelae long after they have already tested negative The problem is that given the urgency of the new cases there is hardly any follow up on the old ones.
A recent study sheds some light between 10 and 20 of patients have this kind of persistent covid Some cases are so extreme that they still manifest fatigue and breathing problems seven months after healing And there are other differences most are women and did not go through the hospital
Except for cases that get complicated and end up in the ICU most covid patients recover in less than two weeks Exactly around 11 days after presenting the first symptoms The followup of more than 4000 positives from the United Kingdom Sweden and the United States confirms that 38 of them had recovered within six days
However 558 patients 133 were still having problems after four weeks Of them more than a third still complained of various ailments at 56 days Even a significant percentage 25 exceeded three months And the study is not over yet and its authors hope for even greater persistence
The researcher at Kings College London and the main author of this research Claire Steves is convinced that the figures are even higher In addition to the fact that many of the first wave patients were never detected in their work they reset the counter when one of those affected stopped having symptoms but after a few days had a relapse
Our classification of disease duration did not consider relapses he says On the other hand the followup is not over yet so he fears that in many cases the symptoms will continue for a longer time Most of those affected by persistent covid are women and did not go through the hospital
Steves study included positives who had to be hospitalized but in most cases the course of the disease was mild and they spent it at home As in the short version longterm covid prevails in the elderly those over 70 years of age were twice as likely to suffer from it
What is different is that women had up to 50 more ballots of developing persistent covid As for the previous pathologies the only one that seems to increase the risk is suffering from asthma
Some of the symptoms are unexpected comments the neurologist and member of the Spanish Neurology Society SEN David García Azorín If you pass the covid it is logical that you have respiratory problems But there are others such as difficulty concentrating or fatigue that are difficult to measure and it is necessary to follow up over time he adds The problem is precisely the lack of that time
García Azorín who has not intervened in the British study is doing others from the Valladolid Clinical Hospital They are following 2098 patients a quarter had to be hospitalized but the rest went to the outpatient clinic Although they have observed a remission over time there are symptoms such as loss of smell or anosmia that persist in 20 of them after three months
In the British study the most prominent symptoms are respiratory problems dyspnea fatigue anosmia or headache All common in the short version of the disease However there seem to be some specifics Compared with those who were cured in less than two weeks 61 of those affected by the long version had heart problems compared to 05 of the seconds
Other differential manifestations were tinnitus and earache memory loss or unusual bodily sensations such as pins and needles or numbness Although they present symptoms similar to those of the short version there are some different ones such as heart problems strange sensations or difficulty concentrating
We have a case a restaurant manager whose job was to be attentive that everything went well with the customers and months after he was cured he says that he can no longer do what he did says the head of the service of neurology of the University Hospital of Albacete Tomás Segura
In our consultation now we do not see the patients who ended up in the ICU but those who did not go to the hospital he adds According to their estimates supported by the Albacovid registry between 15 and 20 of their studied showed neurological disorders long after being cured What is striking is that where they have been able to do cognitive tests like this head of the ward we do not see a trace of the disease
The pulmonologist Germán Peces Barba vice president of SEPAR Spanish Society of Pulmonology and Thoracic Surgery regrets that there are hardly any studies In his daily experience he has verified that there is a relationship between the severity of the disease and the duration of the sequelae having a case that was infected in March and they still persist
The most ambitious project to know the relevance of persistent covid in Spain is being carried out by the Spanish Society of General and Family Physicians SEMG It is difficult to determine its incidence it is already difficult to know the global incidence says Dr Pilar Rodríguez Ledo vice president and head of research at the SEMG
Through a survey they are following more than 2000 people who have had the disease They are about to publish their final results but you can anticipate that the number of cases in the long version is closer to 20 than 10
This work has allowed Rodríguez Ledo to see two well differentiated groups In one of the seriously ill patients most are elderly and had previous pathologies The sequels come from this painting
But here we are talking about young people mean age 44 years without previous problems who did not have to go to the hospital and the majority 79 are women They are people with negative PCR but with the same symptoms as when they were in the acute phase of the disease says the doctor
But are they symptoms or sequelae The canonical definition says that the former are parallel to the disease and the latter are consequence But the coronavirus confuses everything Respiratory problems are a clear sequel to a virus that especially attacks the lower respiratory tract
But there are other phenomena such as impairment of the senses which should subside once the acute phase has passed For Rodríguez Ledo it is a difficult distinction to make with covid García Azorín recalls that once the virus has been eliminated another thing is the duration of the activation of the immune system and most of these symptoms are caused by this or organic failures
Meanwhile Peces Barba highlights that some such as anxiety or depression do not have an organic background And Tomás Segura speaks of social consequences more than the covid
